Quick Hits: Cardinals, Nationals, Rodriguez

Congratulations to Buster Posey and Fernando Rodney, who were named MLB.com’s comeback players of the year for their respective leagues. Rodney had a historic season, posting a 0.60 ERA and striking out more than a batter per inning in Tampa Bay. Posey had an MVP-caliber year after missing most of the 2011 season with a broken leg and damaged ankle ligaments. Here are today’s links…

The Cardinals, now just one win away from another World Series appearance, are doing just fine without Albert Pujols, Yahoo's Jeff Passan writes. St. Louis’ roster looks just as scary as it did a year ago thanks to an abundance of homegrown contributors.

The Cardinals are believed to have offered Pujols a seven-year deal with three player options last offseason, Bill Shaikin of the LA Times reports. St. Louis GM John Mozeliak said Pujols was a "special part" of the organization. "In a normal — or in a more sterile — environment, we wouldn't pursue those types of things," the GM told Shaikin.

An American League scout suggested to Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com that no teams would be interested in Alex Rodriguez, who’s owed $114MM plus bonuses over the course of the next five years (Twitter link). For more on the Yankees’ offseason plans check out this collection of links.

Look up Dennis Eckersly’s stats from 1990.. All of his numbers are better.. Across the board and he finished **5th** in Cy Young voting on a team that went to the WS, not that finished 3rd in it’s division…

It is a regular season award and an individual award so how the team finished and what a team does in the playoffs is not relevant. Also the votes are turned in at the end of the regular season so you have no way of knowing how a player will do in the playoffs. Again not saying Rodney should win but he could get some 4th or 5th place votes.

Players have been passed over before on teams that performed poorly, or did not make the PO was the point at the time a vote was taken if the voting occurred during/end of season in favor of a player still playing into the PO.

At any rate.. Relievers have not exactly been awarded CY Young that many times, like they have been passed over for inducting into the HOF.. Lee Smith being a classic example.

Boston makes any trades that involve decent prospects and my thinking is that they will offset that loss in prospects by moving the abundance of young and controllable (on the cheap) middle relievers that they are loaded with who all did pretty well last season, then pretty much give away Aceves.

Teams, such as the Nationals will be in the market for middle relievers, maybe an additional LH specialist that Boston also has an abundance of (3) and be ready to deal.

They could easily move 2-3 RH relievers, even 2 LH if they are not going to use Morales as a FT SP next year and bump the LH relievers up to 4 total.

Need to find a spot for Alex Wilson, who never could find an opening on last year’s staff and probably Carpenter and Webster later on. Several need to be moved and might as well get it done over the winter.

Maybe I am off the mark, but the way the Cardinals lineup seems constructed, I would be for a massive regression. Their hitting is filled with players that performed as role players or average regulars in the minors and have exploded in the Majors through key times and periods to make this team look more complete than they may actually be.

I suppose we will see next year, but the Cardinals dont strike me as a long term competitor with the their lineup as is.

What part of the line-up would you be talking about? Craig has hit at every level, just never had a true position is why he was never highly rated. Jay can carry a good OBP and his defense isn’t going to go away. Freese has been a steady player, he just finally has healthy ankles. Molina could regress a bit, but he has shown steady improvement every year. Carpenter is an average 3B and good utility player. I guess kozma is playing over his ability, but he is really the only one.

Agreed. Then you have to look at a possible rotation of Carp, Waino, Garcia, Lohse(maybe) Shelby Miller(maybe) Lance Lynn, and Westbrook. Maybe even throw in Joe Kelly and Rosenthal into the mix. They could use a more reliable lefty out of the pen, but other than that, they have a deep mix of arms.

Possibly. But he referenced their minor league career and pretty much everyone is what they were projected to be. None of them are superstars, just a lot of nice players.

The system has been producing lately. It will be interesting to see if the success continues with the crazy amount of pitching talent they have getting close to the majors. The system has gone from a bottom-ten to potentially a top-5 system in the matter of about 2 years. Pretty crazy.

As I much as I despise the Cardinals, they are the # 1 organization in baseball. Mid level payroll, made postseason in the last 13 years or so, Talented minor league system, Great fanbase, Young homegrown talent now etc etc.

Cardinals are Hands down the best organization in the last 13 years or so. Kudos to that organization.

They were 4th in team b.a. and 5th in total runs scored. Freese and Craig have always been injury plagued, and for the most part, played full seasons. Yadi’s numbers seem to improve each year, Holliday is Holliday, and Jay/Kozma/Descalso/Carpenterare just starting to make their mark in the majors. While it is unlikely Beltran will match his numbers from this season again, this is not a team to take lightly. They were just a streaky team offensively at times, yet they all seem to heat up at the same time.

The Cardinals success is just another example on how overrated MLB superstars are. This game rewards those teams that have talent spread all-over the diamond and are just “Complete” teams which leads me to believe that the value of 5-6 solid players’ exceeds that of 1-2 “Superstar” level performers.